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The Peace of Ardres signed June 7 by Henry VIII and François I ends 2 years of conflict.
Pope Paul meets with Charles V June 7 and promises money and troops to help squelch the Protestant movement. Charles forms an alliance with Maurice of Saxony and on July 20 outlaws the leaders of the Schmalkaldic League Philip of Hesse and Saxony's elector John Hesse. He conquers Saxony, which is then retaken by John Frederick while Charles is busy crushing the southern members of the League (see 1547).
James Butler, 9th earl of Ormonde, dies of poison at Ely House, London, October 28 at age 50.
An Ottoman army occupies Moldavia while other Ottomans capture Yemen on the Red Sea, but the Ottoman admiral Barbarossa (Khair ad-Din) dies at age 81 (approximate) after a career in which he has secured the eastern Mediterranean for the Turks (his pirate successors will raid Mediterranean coastal towns and villages for the next 3 centuries).
Portuguese forces in India rout the Gujurati army at Diu.
The ruler of the northern Siamese kingdom Chiang Mai dies without male issue; the Laotian king Photisarath has married a princess from Chiang Mai and installs his own son on the Chiang Mai throne (see 1547).
Maya in New Spain stage a major uprising against the Spanish but are crushed by the conquistadors.
Charles V revokes the South American charter granted in 1528 to the Welser family of Augsburg, whose banking house suffers enormous losses.
Explorer Francisco de Orellana makes another trip to the Amazon but some of his ships and men are lost on the transatlantic passage and his own vessel capsizes near the mouth of the river, drowning him (year approximate; see 1542).
Europe's Fugger family is estimated to have a fortune of 6 million gulden (see 1525; 1550).
On Contagion and Contagious Diseases (De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis et eorum Curatione) by Girolamo Fracastoro gives the first description of typhus and suggests that infections are carried from one person to another by tiny bodies (seminaria contagionum) capable of multiplying themselves (see Fracastoro on syphilis, 1530). People can become infected, he says, by direct contact, through the air, or by carriers such as soiled clothing and linen. It is the first scientific statement of the true nature of contagion, disease germs, and modes of disease transmission, but the germ theory of disease will not gain wide acceptance for another 3 centuries (see van Leeuwenhoek, 1683; Pasteur, 1861; Nicolle, 1903).
The health of England's Henry VIII fails rapidly. The king has grown so grossly overweight that he must be moved up and down stairs by special machinery.
Martin Luther dies at his native Eisleben February 18 at age 63; the emperor Charles V goes to war at the urging of Pope Paul III, who wants to restore the unity of the Church.
Scottish Lutheran reformer George Wishart is burnt to death March 1 on orders from Cardinal Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews. The archbishop has persecuted Protestants and is assassinated at his castle May 29.
Parisian printer Etienne Dolet is hanged and burnt at the stake August 3. He has been denounced as a heretic and blasphemer for printing the works of Erasmus, Melancthon, and other humanists.
Oxford's Christ Church College is founded by Henry VIII in a reorganization of Cardinal College, founded by the late Cardinal Wolsey (see Corpus Christi, 1517; Trinity, 1555). Henry founds Trinity College at the University of Cambridge (see St. John's, 1511); created by joining two 14th century colleges (Michaelhouse and King's Hall), it will become the largest and richest of the university's colleges, growing to have about 600 undergraduates, 300 graduate students, and more than 160 fellows (see Emmanuel, 1584).
Nonfiction: The Proverbs of John Heywood by English epigrammatist John Heywood, 47, includes the proverb "No man ought to look a given horse in the mouth," which goes back in one form or another to St. Jerome of 400 A.D. Other proverbs cited by Heywood: "All is well that ends well"; "A penny for your thoughts"; "A man may well bring a horse to the water, but he cannot make him drink"; "Beggars shouldn't be choosers"; "If one will not another will; so are all maidens married"; "Better late than never"; "Butter would not melt in her mouth"; "The fat is in the fire"; "Half a loaf is better than none"; "Haste makes waste"; "The green new broom sweepeth clean"; "It's an ill wind that blows no good"; "Look before you leap"; "Love me, love my dog"; "Many hands make light work"; "Two heads are better than one"; "When the iron is hot, strike"; "When the sun shineth, make hay"; "The tide tarrieth for no man"; "One good turn deserves another"; "One swallow maketh not a summer"; "Rome was not built in a day"; "Out of the frying pan into the fire"; "To tell tales out of school"; and "More things belong to marriage than four bare legs in a bed."
Scholar Sir Thomas Elyot dies at Carleton, Cambridgeshire, March 26 at age 55 (approximate).
Painting: Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach; Virgin with Little Bird by Spanish painter Luis de Morales, 26.
Theater: Orazia by Italian playwright-poet Pietro Aretino, 54.
England's population tops 4 million, with many of her people desperately short of food after a series of bad harvests.
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